The YouTube description makes it clear that this is a teaser for a BBC documentary, "The Polar Bear Family and Me", that's airing in a couple of days. So presumably there won't be a post of the rest until after that point.

Oso Negro said: Bears are a damned good reason to go into the wild heavily armed.

I realize I live in bear territory by living in the Appalachian mountains, but bears are becoming common sights in neighborhoods around here. When someone asks why I need a high capacity magazine, I remind them that coyotes eat livestock & small kids and bears eat whatever they want. High capacity hunting rifle makes it a fair fight over who eats whom for dinner.

I was struck by the cameraman's insight: "It's one of the few animals that see us as food."

As Mel puts it, above, there are animals that are adapting to human presence very well. Partly that's because we are spreading into their territory, but also because the animals are figuring out how to raid garbage cans, eat our ornamental shrubs (if herbivorous), and even stalk pets and children playing in the yard (if carnivorous). We've got black bears in the east, the polar bear's larger cousin the grizzly in the west, plus wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes.

Just a typical and poor attempt at competing with the "reality"-show-pure-bullshit, with multiple takes, multiple cameramen, director, a "BBC-reporter-star" who got his acting lessons from Steve Irwin, food tent, helicopter to get them to their warm hotel quickly, and garbage-addicted bear drawn to the bait.

One admires the coolly dispassionate way he describes the experience. However, he is not an airplane pilot describing a malfunction to the tower, but a reporter describing the experience of being clawed at by a polar bear. I think the reporting would be more vivid and accurate if he had acted panicky and sick with terror. "Surprisingly the polar bear is chewing on my leg. I would have thought that he'd claw out my entrails and start with them."

I think he's amused and non afraid because that little plexiglass cage was made specifically to withstand a polar bear attack. I kind of wished he would've stuck a couple of fingers out those openings to tease the bear a bit.

These National Geographic "documentary" type things make me laugh. There was one where they were trying to make high drama about some cave, full of crystals I think. The danger!! OOOH. The tension....would they be able to get through the small passage to the caves of crystal. My guess was... YUP, since the cameraman who was filming the intrepid explorers from the front had obviously managed to get ahead of them, turn around and film. So...not only did the cameraman get into the crystal cave, he was able to get his camera, lighting gear and sound equipment in, turn around and film several takes of fake tension filled fake exploring.

Takes away all the drama when you stop to think about the other people in the production who have already gone where they were pretending to explore.

That reminds me of the 'Far Side' comedy where a couple in a car touring one of those Photo Safaris gigs and the lady says, "Quick Henry, start the car. That one has a coat hanger" as the lion tried to pop the lock with a coat hanger.

And 'Survivor Man' Les Shroud was FORCED to take a rifle with him when he went way north in Alaska. The Eskimo guide would not take him unless he took the rifle. Sure enough, a polar bear stalked his camp! And Les loaded the gun and slept with it!

This is why I say fuck the global warmng pukes, with their videos of a lonely polar bear on an ice floe. I refuse to feel sorry for any animal that wants to dine on my still twitching corpse.

There's a new show on the History Channel about dudes who go out of their way to save alligators. In the promo there's a gator that tries to eat this guy's face, and yet he's proud of the injury he's just sustained.

I once read a book by a woman who trekked across the sea ice from Resolute Bay to the North Magnetic Pole and back, alone and unsupported, just to be the first woman to do it. The Inuit strongly recommended she take a dog team; she insisted it would defeat the purpose.

So one fellow takes her aside and convinces her to take a single husky, let him carry his own food. Convinced her that without a dog to warn her, the bears would stalk her, slowly and relentlessly, and she wouldn't be aware of them until it was too late.

She also brought a high-powered rifle. She didn't want to kill a bear but would have done it if she'd had to.

The first time the dog started to warn her, she picked up her rifle and fired a warning shot close to the bear. It didn't scare him a bit! The bears out on sea ice are quite used to loud cracks.

Over the rest of her trek, a good half-dozen bear attacks were thwarted either by her husky chasing the bear away (amazing how far the right attitude can carry you in an unfair fight), or by her firing signal flares right in front of the bear's lowered head. One bear kept advancing until he burned his nose.

Fritz - yeah, an appetizer. My brother in law is mr outdoors, but was raised by parents who would say, see those dummies up ahead feeding cheetos to the bear through the car window (at Yellowstone)? What do you think happens when they run out of cheetos?Like "Grizzly Man" most don't realize they are not in a petting zoo. When they run out of food, bears (or any wild animal) will still want more and will then eat you or destroy your car trying to get to you! You are delicious!

I refuse to feel sorry for any animal that wants to dine on my still twitching corpse.

Don't worry about it. After he hits you with one of those paws, your corpse won't be twitching.

When I last arrived in Anchorage Airport there were two stuffed bears in glass cases for tourists to contemplate on our way to pick up our baggage. Both the polar bear and the Alaskan brown bear are huge. I don't remember if it was that trip or on a trip to Vancouver, but a group of women out jogging got surrounded by a pack of wolves and were lucky to escape with their lives -- I think a car came along or something, but I only remember the women's tears as they remembered their terror.

It's only been a few million years since the members of genus homo learned how to fashion weapons that would let us move smartly up the food chain. Not every animal has gotten the message that killing humans brings other humans out with sticks that make loud noises.

JPS - I remember seeing an episode of the Dog Whisperer about 2 pit bulls that would get into bad fights (which started after going to a dog trainer) and the owners couldn't control them once the fights started. The only member of the household that could stop the pit bulls from fighting was a 10lb orange tabby cat. She would step in, separate them and restore order. As Caesar says, it's all about energy.